Do you think you can tell a bison-grazed prairie from a cattle-grazed prairie? I bet you can’t.

Bison can be found in many parts of North America’s Great Plains and Midwest landscapes and I’ve been fortunate enough to visit many of those locations. I also work at and visit a lot of sites grazed by cattle. I’ve photographed all of the above. As a result, I can present today’s visual quiz: Bison or Cattle?

There are 12 photos below. Each was taken at a prairie grazed by either cattle or bison. All the sites were either being grazed when the photo was taken or were grazed the previous year. In addition, all the prairies have been under grazing management for many years. Your task is to guess which photos were taken at bison-grazed sites and which were at cattle-grazed sites. If you want to study a little first, you can read this 10-year-old post I wrote about the differences between cattle and bison.

Good luck!

Well, how do you feel about your guesses? Have you recorded them? It’s cheating if you don’t write or mark them down before you get the answers. Otherwise, how will you prove you were right or wrong?

Now’s your chance to go back through them one more time before I give you the answers.

Ready?

Here we go:

I made this as easy for you as I could by separating the photos into two groups. The first 9 photos (#’s1-9) are all cattle-grazed sites. The last three (#’s 10-12) are in bison-grazed sites.

How did you do?

I’m guessing you found this quiz difficult. It was supposed to be. There are a couple takeaways I hope you’ll get from it.

First, bison and cattle are more similar than they are different when it comes to their grazing. Both favor grasses over forbs (broadleaf plants), but forbs make up a significant part of the diet for both cattle and bison. When all else is equal, bison are a little more selective toward grasses than cattle.

The key phrase in that last paragraph, though, is “when all else is equal”. The stocking rate and grazing system being used have much more to do with the results than the species of grazing animal. Both bison and cattle are extremely picky about their food when they’re given the chance.

If you put them in large pastures at moderate stocking densities (animals per acre), both animals will walk around and choose only the plant species (and parts of each plant) they really want. Those diet choices vary across the season, and even day by day. Under higher stocking densities, both cattle and bison have to be less selective and eat what is available.

A second important point is that both bison and cattle can be used to create a wide range of habitat structure while maintaining high plant diversity. In contrast, both of them can be grazed in ways that degrade habitat quality and plant diversity. It’s up to the land managers to put either animal in situations that lead to positive results.

The final point I want to make is that you should always be cautious about reading too much from photos. Photography is a great way to share what’s happening at a site, but you only see what the photographer wants to show you. It’s really important to keep that in mind – with anyone, including me.

In this post, I was very selective about the photos I used to represent the points I was trying to make. I could have shown you photos from both bison and cattle sites that would make it appear that their grazing was doing awful things to those prairies. Similarly, I could have selected only photos that made grazed prairies look fantastic. I did a little of both in this post because I was trying to trick you and make the quiz difficult – and to support the idea that both bison and cattle can be used effectively (or not) for good prairie management. All of the sites shown in this post are well-managed and in good ecological shape.

If you’ve not worked with either cattle or bison, it’s really hard to describe how fascinating it can be to watch grazing animals interact with a prairie. While I’m pretty good at anticipating general patterns of behavior, I’m surprised all the time about the choices both bison and cattle make. I enjoy that, but I also understand how others might find that slight unpredictability frustrating, or even scary.

Grazing doesn’t make sense in all prairies. However, in sites where it’s feasible and fits with land management objectives, grazing – by either cattle or bison – can be a really flexible and dynamic stewardship tactic. And yes, horses, goats, and sheep can all be used effectively too, depending upon what a manager wants to accomplish and how they set up their grazing schemes.

If you take nothing else from this post, I hope you remember this: the results of grazing treatments, regardless of the grazing animal, are determined mostly by stocking rate and grazing system. A smart land manager constantly evaluates and adapts as they go, regardless of whether grazing is involved or not. When they do, good things can happen with bison, cattle, goats, or even gerbils. Gerbils take pretty specialized fences, though.